Gardens of the Roman Empire

Tomb Garden of (Cl)oelia Tyche and (C)loelia Faustina

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Sublocation Description

Garden

Tomb Garden of (Cl)oelia Tyche and (C)loelia Faustina

Keywords

Garden Description

The lower right portion of a marble slab found in the vicinity of the Via del Mare outside Rome records an epitaph of the late first or second century dedicated to a mother, [Cl]oelia Tyche, and sister, [C]loelia Faustina, and their freedmen and freedwomen, and declaring that the property, which comprised "a tomb monument and building and garden enclosed by a wall" (hoc monimentum et aedificium et hortum, ita uti maceria clusum est), would not pass to the heir.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

G. Vergantini, La collezione epigrafica dei Musei Capitolini: Inediti – revisioni –contributi al riordino, (Tituli 6), edited by S. Panciera (Rome 1987) 152-53 n. 72, Tav. XXXIX, 4. worldcat
G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 176 n. 4. worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Anonymous

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Garden

Tomb Garden of Attia Quintilla

Keywords

Garden Description

A fragmentary opisthographic slab of unknown urban provenance, now in the Lapidario Profano ex Lateranense of the Vatican Museums, records an anonymous epitaph dedicating to the dedicator and his household a tomb garden (cepotafi[um]) and tomb monument with a building.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 177 n. 10. worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Attia Quintilla

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Location

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Sublocation Description

Garden

Tomb Garden of Attia Quintilla

Keywords

Garden Description

A handsome marble funerary altar of unknown but presumably urban provenance, now in the Louvre, decorated on the front with Erotes holding garlands and on the sides with storks and other birds records the epitaph of Attia T. f. Quintilla set up by her father, Attius Phlegon, her mother Attia Quinta (probably both ex-slaves), and her brother Attius T. f. Quintianus. Along with the monument, which can be dated to the first or early second century, Quintilla's parents and brother also dedicated to her and to their descendants and the freedmen and freedwomen of their household "a field or garden (agrum sive hortum) with a building, enclosed by a wall".The building, a substantial structure of some thirteen rooms, seems to comprise, on the ground floor, a series of three work rooms opening off a central corridor that leads directly through the house from front to back, a two-room suite separately accessible from the front porch (perhaps the residence of the gardner and overseer of the tomb), and a stairway to the upper floor. The upper floor presents a more seigneural aspect: in addition to two large rooms and a pair of small functional rooms corresponding to those on the first floor, the residential space includes a narrow rectangular room or balcony over the entranceway and a two-room suite and a separate room built out above the rear service court and overlooking the garden. A broad passageway eleven feet wide along the side of the building seems to allow for a wagon to be backed into position for loading directly from the garden. The dimensions of the rooms inscribed along most of the interior walls indicate that the three building plans are not drawn to the same scale, and it is not clear how the two structures were situated in relation to each other. The configuration of the aedificium and garden suggests the arrangements of a working kitchen garden with related workspaces on the ground floor and a residential and dining area on the upper floor, perhaps for the use of family members celebrating communal meals at the tomb site during the annual Parentalia and other festivals of the dead. The cepotaphium dedicated by C. Cominius Abascantus at Puteoli in 148 CE provided for the town magistrates and officers of the Augustales to dine annually at the site in a dining room above his tomb (no. XXX).

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

W. Altmann, Die römischen Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit, (Berlin 1905) 168 no. 214; S. worldcat
S. Ducroix, Catalogue analytique des inscriptions latines sur pierre conservées au Musée du Louvre, (Paris 1975) 96 no. 314. worldcat
D. Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre aus den Nekropolen Roms, (Acta Bernensia X) (Bern 1987) 107 no. 329, Taf. worldcat
G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 177 n. 9. worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of C. Hostius Pamphilus

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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Garden

Tomb Garden of C. Hostius Pamphilus

Keywords

Garden Description

A travertine slab of unknown urban provenance, now in the Mus-ei Capitolini, records an epitaph of the mid first century BCE of a freedman doctor, C. Hostius C.l. Pamphilus, who bought a tomb (thirteen by twenty-four feet in area) for himself and his wife Nelpia M. l. Hymnis, and for their freedmen and their descendants. A crude verse (almost a septenarius) following the dedication declares "this is our eternal home, this our farm, these our gardens (horti), this our monument". It is unclear whether horti here refers to a tomb garden or, perhaps more probably, to a suburban estate, as normally in contemporary fashionable usage. The ambivalence of the term in any case draws a link, conceptual as well as topographical, between productive rural property (fundus) and a burial monument conceived of as a home for the deceased. If horti refers to a tomb garden proper, it would be among the earliest attested in the environs of Rome.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

M. Mattei, Testimonianze epigrafiche e attestazioni letterarie relative all'area degli Horti Lamiani, in Le tranquille dimore degli dei, edited by M. Cima and E. La Rocca (Venice 1986) 153-54 fig. 103. worldcat
G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 178 n. 21, 179 fig. 2; J. worldcat
Bodel, Monumental Villas and Villa Monuments, JRA 10 (1997) 26. worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Claudia Peloris

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Location

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Garden

Tomb Garden of Claudia Peloris

Keywords

Garden Description

A marble plaque now in the archaeological museum of Perugia but probably of urban origin records the epitaph of a freedwoman of Octavia, the daughter of the deified emperor Claudius, Claudia Peloris, and her husband, also an imperial freedman and procurator of the Augusti, Ti. Claudius Eutychus, who left to her sisters and freedwomen and their descendants charge of a building (aedificium) and tomb monument (monumentum). An inscribed plan at the center of the plaque depicting different sections of a building and tomb complex (evidently the ones specified in the text) shows, at the right, a walled tomb enclosure, with the monument built into the rear wall and a corridor leading off the left side of the forecourt to a stair descending perpendicularly to an undergound burial chamber below; at the left, the ground floor of a two storey building (the set of rooms depicted at the top of the plan represents the second floor) with a roughly rectangular walled garden (70 X 76 X 65 X 65 Roman feet, some 410 square meters), opening off the rear (Fig. XXX). The building, a substantial structure of some thirteen rooms, seems to comprise, on the ground floor, a series of three work rooms opening off a central corridor that leads directly through the house from front to back, a two-room suite separately accessible from the front porch (perhaps the residence of the gardner and overseer of the tomb), and a stairway to the upper floor. The upper floor presents a more seigneural aspect: in addition to two large rooms and a pair of small functional rooms corresponding to those on the first floor, the residential space includes a narrow rectangular room or balcony over the entranceway and a two-room suite and a separate room built out above the rear service court and overlooking the garden. A broad passageway eleven feet wide along the side of the building seems to allow for a wagon to be backed into position for loading directly from the garden. The dimensions of the rooms inscribed along most of the interior walls indicate that the three building plans are not drawn to the same scale, and it is not clear how the two structures were situated in relation to each other. The configuration of the aedificium and garden suggests the arrangements of a working kitchen garden with related workspaces on the ground floor and a residential and dining area on the upper floor, perhaps for the use of family members celebrating communal meals at the tomb site during the annual Parentalia and other festivals of the dead. The cepotaphium dedicated by C. Cominius Abascantus at Puteoli in 148 CE provided for the town magistrates and officers of the Augustales to dine annually at the site in a dining room above his tomb (no. XXX).

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

Ch. Hülsen, Piante iconografiche incise in marmo, MDAI(R) 5 (1890) 46-52 and Tav. III; H. von Hesberg. worldcat
H. von Hesberg, Römische Grundrissplane auf Marmor, in Bauplanung und Bautheorie der Antike (Berlin 1983) 124-26. worldcat
G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 181 fig. 3, 184. worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of P. Sullius Zoticus and Sullia Nice

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Sublocation Description

Garden

Tomb Garden of (Cl)oelia Tyche and (C)loelia Faustina

Keywords

Garden Description

A marble slab of unknown urban provenance broken at the bottom and long lost records an epitaph of the first or second century erected by P. Sullius Zoticus and his wife Sullia Nice to themselves, their children, their freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants; to "another wife" of Zoticus, Iulia Tatiane; and (it seems) to a Sullius Istefanus. The epitaph concludes with provision for a fine to be paid to the treasury of the pontiffs and the Vestal Virgins by any who attempt to alienate the tomb and surrounding property, which comprised "a garden with cistern enclosed by a surrounding wall" (in conti[nenti] / hortulu(m) maceria clus[um] / at cisterna(m) perten[dentem]).

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 177 n. 11. worldcat